In order to make sure your webpages and website are accessible to all visitors and not just some please follow the guidelines below. The links below will take you to the appropriate section to learn more.

If you have any questions regarding them please contact the Digital Strategy team via email at: webcontent@uml.edu or phone: 978-934-3875.

Clear Formatting

Unfortunately you can't paste in directly from anything other than Notepad or by using a special option outlined below. This also means you’ll have to add any links, bold etc. after pasting. You can only paste in 1 of 2 ways:

  1. paste using shift+option+V
  2. Paste into Notepad and then into Site Edit / Tridion

All links should use descriptive text - meaning no "click here" and no links that are the web address themselves. This means you need to write out where the link is going or what the person is clicking on. Instead of "click here" use something like visit the UMass Lowell Student Life website to learn more. Visit our Document Accessibility page to see how to make sure your document is ready to be used.

The one exception to this is an email - this should be written out as it appears, for example email: michael_pueschel@uml.edu rather than email Michael Pueschel.

Note: if you use the same link repeatedly on a page it should have the same descriptive text each time you use it.

Underlining

University policy and web best practices (as well as some federal guidelines on disability etc.) are that underlining should only be used to indicate a hyperlink. Links in Tridion Site Edit are automatically underlined. Don’t underline other text that isn’t a link, please use bold instead.

Bold and Italics

Use bold and italics to highlight or emphasize important information. Be careful not to use it too much as this causes nothing to stand out. Screen readers do not recognize or announce bold or italics - so this should not be the only way to point out this information is extra important.

Capitalization

Screen readers will read words in all capital letters one letter at a time. This should only be used for acronyms and abbreviations such as UML.

Acronyms and Abbreviations

All acronyms and abbreviations should be spelled out the first time they are used on a page with the abbreviation in ( ) after it – then after that you can use just the abbreviation. An example of this would be UMass Lowell (UML) or University Crossing (UCC) etc.

Special Characters Including Asterisks

Screen readers can’t jump to content that is explained further in a footnote or noted by an asterisk (*). Screen readers also can’t read special symbols, like asterisks, aloud. Please use text to explain this another way instead (For example note: exclusions apply).

Lists

Use bulleted lists or numbered lists (available through the Site Edit menu) to indicate a list of items. Screen readers will not read non-standard lists (for example ones made with dashes etc.) Also do not paste in a numbered or bulleted list from another program instead create them using Site Edit.

Images

All images on a webpage need to be at least 800 pixels wide or larger and can't just be made bigger as this often makes the image blurry. All images need to have appropriate alt-text. Please visit our image accessibility page to learn about alt-text and more.

Video

All videos need to be captioned accurately before they can be added to the website. Learn more about this process on our Video Accessibility page.

Special thanks to the University of Albany's Web Accessibility team for information used to better explain this process. Please visit the University of Albany's Web Accessibility website to see the way they handle accessibility.

Web Accessibility Resources

Other Resources